How to link a heading in one column with body text in another

[hellopaul4]

Hello,

I have some headings and paragraphs that I'd like to keep together, like this:

I've tried using drop caps, indenting the text and "unindenting" the first line with the header on it, plus a few other unsuccessful workarounds. So I'm hoping someone might have the answer - as you can hopefully guess from the screengrab above, I'd like to have the headers right-aligned, to the left of each paragraph, but lined up properly with the first line. I know I could fudge it manually with a lot of leading/space before/after adjustments, but obviously that would all be useless if the body text was then edited. Is there a simpler way?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

~ Paul

UPDATE: I might have found a solution, here: Split Text frame in 2. Header on the Left, Paragraph on Right. (image inc)

...unless InDesign has introduced a better way to do it since last year?

[Laubender]

Hi Paul,

did you try anchored text frames for the headings?
Anchored to the first insertion point of the paragraph.

The header's background could be a paragraph shading of the paragraphs in the main text.

Regards,
Uwe

[hellopaul4]

Thanks Laubender​. I'd just found that method too; I tried to update my original question with the anchor explanation, but the forum won't let me. So here's what I did:

That video was fairly useless, just showing someone applying a style and a load of magic happening, with no guidance on how to do the magic. So instead I discovered anchored objects: Cut the text box containing the header, paste it at the start of the paragraph, right-click this newly-pasted text box, choose Anchored Object > Options... and play around with those lovely settings. Job done.

[Laubender]

Ah! You found Obi Wan's workaround using Line Styles perhaps:

Column for heading, column for body text?

Regards,
Uwe

[hellopaul4]

Yes, but I think the anchored text boxes option looked more straightforward.

[winterm]

Assuming your body text is Left aligned, Myriad 10/12.

For body text: assign big enough Left Indent (let’s start with 30 mm).

For heading: assign Baseline Shift -12 mm.

Space between chapters can be adjusted by making Heading leading bigger / smaller. Say, setting it to 0 effectively eliminates any additional space.

[hellopaul4]

I played with indenting the body text, un-indenting the header and moving it down with a baseline shift, but it would all go a bit wrong if the header went to two lines, so I'm sticking with the pasted/anchor method for now.

But thanks, everyone, for your quick and detailed replies!

[Doug A Roberts]

in Laubender's link, you can see the solution to that in one of Obi-Wan's later posts: create several character styles, each with an increasing baseline shift (i.e. style 1 has a shift of -18, style 2 -36, style 3 -54, depending on the leading you want to use). then use them sequentially as nested line styles in the heading para style.

[hellopaul4]

Yes, I noticed that (various character styles for different numbers of lines).

It's odd that InDesign can't do this automatically.

[Doug A Roberts]

it is kind of awkward initially, but once it's set up it's as good as automatic.